this report is about our return after a short 2 day sightseeing trip to London, which I made together with my boyfriend. We came in on easyJet via Luton Airport, now the return flight was being done from London Gatwick Airport.

We took the London underground from our hotel in Kensington to Victoria Stn. Due construction works on the Circle/District Lines downtown, we were forced to make a little longer journey by taking Piccadilly Lines and change at Green Park on Victoria Lines. In fact, it took only a few minutes more to get at Victoria Stn. From there, we were able to take a train/railway service down to Gatwick Airport. It was crowded everywere, and the queue for the ticket counters were loooooooooooooooooong... so we decided to try the ticket machines (they only work on bank/creditcards). And they worked

We were able to choose either the normal railway service or the (more expensive) Gatwick Express trains. It was an easy choice:

So we saved total 8 pounds for us together on this journey, and had a nice Burger King meal for that

The train left on time from platform 19 (direction Southampton), and after a comfortable 35 minutes ride, with some nice views on the British landscape we arrived at Gatwick Airport Station.

EasyJet departures are from the South terminal at this airport, which was also stated on our confirmation letter, which was printed out when we made the reservation on this airline. So all clearly and well noticed to us .

We saw on the screens in the hall to checkin in Area "C", which is the same place as e.g. Virgin Atlantic has her counters. It was crowded everywere around, but the desks for Amsterdam and Lyon (shared desks) were completely empty. Checkin was done in 2 minutes now, we left our luggage, and got our group B boarding passes. The agent told us to check the screens in the departure lounge regularly to find out our departure gate.

After proceeding through security, we came in an even more crowded and hot place, full or British holidaymakers. They behave like.... . Anyway, maybe this was due to some severe delays of charterflights

As boarding should start at 17:25 (as shown on the boarding pass), we were a little confused as at 17:45 still no departure gate was shown on the screens :S We became little worried about a delay or something like that. But, at 17:50 we saw gate 24 assigned to our flight. We had to hurry probably, because scheduled departure time was 18:10 (and the airport says the walk from departure lounge to gate 24 takes approx. 20 minutes!)

Anyway, after some 10 minutes walk, we arrived at our gate were we saw our aircraft waiting for us. This time a brandnew Airbus A319, one of the famous 2-overwing exit A319's. Therefore, easyJet is able to accomodate up to 156 passengers on these aircrafts.

When we checked the aircrafts registration, we saw that this one was very new and deliverd on May 31, 2005. Always nice to fly on such a young 'bird'!

Finally our boarding call was made, and after Group A, we and others of group B were able to enter the cabin. Still enough window seats available to choose from, and we took our seats in the rear cabin this time. Also this flight was very well loaded with around 95%. Only a few seats left empty (even the aisle seat on our row !).

Only 9 minutes behind schedule we were offblockes, and the cabin crew did again a great safety demonstration. The check for handluggage etc. was done carefully again, and captain Mr. Hopkins made some announcements about thunderstorms nearby the airport, the bumpy climbout to AMS, and our cruising altitude of 23000ft.

We lined up for departure on runway 26L, and after a DAS Air Cargo DC-10F landing on the runway, we increased power and were on our way back home!

The climb was just normal, and after a rightturn we flew right into the thunderstorm Wow, some good turbulence was felt in the cabin, making lots of passengers laughing. Even the pursur couldn't excist her laugh, so she had to stop here announcements .

Soon after we reached clearer skies, and the crew started the 'service'.

The whole cabin was served quickly and soon after the captain told us about AMS weather forecast (rainshower), temperature (24C) and SE-winds. This gave us a runway 06 approach. We had a nice view out of the window, before we lowered into clouds again...

Soon after, we flew over the city of Katwijk, A44 highway, our well known 'polder' were we live ourselves, and finally we touched the concrete of the runway. After a long rollout we turned of the runway to our stand D8. We parked next to another easyJet A319 from Geneva, and on the other side was a Martinair A320 aircraft.

Another just normal and well organized easyJet flight came to an end, and after clearing immigration, we found our luggage already waiting on the belt. Baggagehandling was done very quickly in our opinions, and we had nothing to complain about again

We hope you enjoyed also this report, next one will be my Europe-triangle AMS-EMA-GVA-AMS later this month.

1) Luton offers the Green Line coach service for GBP 5.00/person
2) Luton offers now easyBus for prices from GBP 1.00/person if you book early, max GBP 7.00. Transport per fast minibus to downtown. (we did this and payed GBP 2.00/person as you read in the other report)
3) Gatwick is easy to reach by normal railway for decend prices.
So both of above are considerable for us. And you reach the city within the hour by or convenient coachservice or railway. From the dropoff points/station, you can easily transfer to the underground to your final destination.

Stansted is inconvenient, due to the way too expensive Stansted Express trains. STN came never to our mind, when we had to travel to downtown. I only used it in the past to transfer to other flights (read Ryanair flights). For any other reason I will ever try to avoid STN!